STACKED

books

ALA in Anaheim

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I’m super excited about this year’s ALA in Anaheim for a number of reasons. I believe this is my 5th ALA conference, and it’s in the same place where the first one I attended was (where, incidentally, I got to go for free because I won a little paper contest).

A big reason I’m excited is that it’s the first time I’m participating as part of an awards committee. I’m actually not a committee member, but I am the administrative assistant to the Alex Awards, and it has been totally eye opening in terms of how much work the members have put into nominating and reading the titles under consideration. I’m eager to watch the process as members talk about the books in person, since I’ve only been listening via email so far.

I’m looking forward to the YA Blogger meet up too, and hope I get the chance to meet a number of people I’ve had the chance to talk to via the blog and Twitter. We don’t check your cred at the door, so even if you haven’t actually blogged in a long time, you’re still welcome to show up. It is ALL AGES, too.

Topping the chart of “things I’m excited about at ALA” is the one I haven’t talked too much about: I’m presenting with Jackie on Sunday. We’re going to be talking about passive programming for teens in libraries, and this presentation has been over a year in the making. I think the thing that’s most exciting about it is we wove the word “subversively” into the title. If you’re around Sunday and are looking for a presentation to listen to, it’d be neat if you’d consider ours.

I’ve got a small list of galleys I hope to snag when I get a minute to check out the exhibits (I think maybe 3 titles are on it). The fun, of course, is finding things I didn’t know about and hearing what the publicists are excited about (not always those big budget titles, by the way). If you’re going to ALA for the first time, please read my post about ARCs and then check out Sarah’s post on convention behavior (who, incidentally, I am so excited to see, too — the two of us have spent the last 4 conferences “together,” but we have never actually had a chance to spend time together ourselves and we are going to this time).

Aside from these things, I’ve got a list of other things I’m planning on going to and doing, but I’m saving much of that for after the convention to talk about. I’ve also already packed a copious amount of tea — I know there will be little or no sleep already.

Going to ALA? What are you looking forward to most?

Links of Note

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I wasn’t going to post a series of links for this week, but I had a few that came up that were too good not to pass along. Here’s your bi-weekly mix of the fun, interesting, and newsworthy book stuff from around the web. After linking all of these, I realized there’s probably a whole week’s worth of reading here, so grab a meal and a drink before diving in.

  • To honor the death of Ray Bradbury, Slate has a nice slide show of the cover art from Fahrenheit 451. I know. I had slide shows too, but this one is worth it, especially if you like cover designs. Oh, and then you can check out which of those covers of Bradbury’s book make ShortLists’s compilation of the 50 coolest book covers.
  • Remember a couple weeks ago I wondered whether the reissues of the Truman Capote books would get new covers? Turns out they are. Some of these are great and some, like the one for In Cold Blood, I don’t care for as much. It fits, but I prefer the original one (actually, both earlier ones — and hey, one of them made the ShortList compilation linked above, too). My favorite is the one to the left over there. It’s creepy as hell. 
  • Two things on digital books and digital reading. First, Craig Mod has a post about how book covers aren’t dead in the digital world, and he has some interesting ideas of how digital books can delight readers who like design in different ways. It’s a little lengthy, but the gist of it is: opportunity! There are new and neat things to be accomplished. The second post on this topic worth reading about got really overlooked because of another post I’ll share, but Jackie Parker has a great piece on enhanced ebooks and how they can be such a great treat for readers. See, John Green shared at BEA how enhanced books aren’t necessary because the story is enough. What he failed to mention or consider, though, is how sometimes the story is so good that readers just want more, and that’s why enhanced books are emerging.  
  • Guess what, bloggers? You have no obligation to “be nice.” You can be, of course, but there’s no obligation. A great post about what bloggers do over at Gossamer Obsessions. Biggest takeaway from that post is this: honesty trumps positivity. This post stemmed from the keynote given by Jennifer Weiner at BEA Blogger Con, which takes me here. . .
  • Let’s talk about BEA Blogger Con. First? From what I’ve read in the recaps, it sounds like Weiner did a pretty good job undermining the hard work of bloggers by proclaiming Oprah was like the first one because she became a reader-raver. That doesn’t sit with me, but since I didn’t get to hear the whole context of the speech or that comment, I’ll go ahead and link to a few of the awesome recaps of BEA Blogger Con. I have been a little disappointed with BEA Blogger Con for a while, and not necessarily because of what I’ve read here — I was invited to be on the critical reviews panel. Note that: I was invited by the organizers to be on the panel. When I said I could not make it but could I attend virtually, I was told nope, sorry, no way, despite there being a panel on using new tech in your blogs. What bothered me about this was how I was approached. I was asked to be on a panel — I didn’t apply, didn’t put my name in consideration, didn’t register for BEA Blogger Con — and then when I said I couldn’t make it and offered an alternative solution, I was simply shut out. From a professional standpoint, it seems sort of backward to invite someone before you know they’re attending (I didn’t ask for a stipend or financial assistance; I simply asked to Skype into the panel). And that’s all I’ve got to really say on the topic, but I’m saddened to see that the BEA Blogger Con wasn’t quite what it could have been. You know. A conference on blogging. 
  • I lied. I have more to add about the BEA Blogger Con, and it’s pretty well summarized in this post about the blogger-publisher relationship. Rather than offer up commentary on that post, I’d like to direct readers to this post. It’s stuff like that which makes all bloggers look pretty greedy and selfish and I ask this, and I ask it with sincerity: why is it every discussion about blogging somehow devolves into ARCs? It’s not currency. I mean that in both senses of the word. I’d like to add, too, in regards to the first post and the topic of the publisher-blogger relationship that there are so many other ways to “judge” a blog than on stats or on Klout (seriously, that was brought up).

  • You’re probably looking for something worth laughing about at this point, right? Here’s something: Courtney Summers has some tips for surviving the zombie apocalypse. I’m buying stock in toothbrush companies right now.  
  • Flavorwire has a list of 30 books you should read before you’re 30. I’ve read 13 of them, and a handful of them are books I’ve actively avoided for all my reading years. I suspect at age 30, I’ll fail this list at about the rate I’m failing it now at 27.
  • Over at io9, they’re celebrating (?) death week, and they offer up a list of a few children’s books that look death right in the eye. One of the books notably missing that I remember dealing with this topic and making me cry pretty hard as a kid was Bridge to Terabithia (that may be the only book as a kid I remember having such a reaction to). 
  • One of the best bloggers I’ve “met” this year has been Sarah over at Clear Eyes, Full Shelves. Aside from being a great reviewer (I really love how thoughtful she is and how she presents her reviews), she writes some really intelligent posts on big topics. Her commentary on the notion of guilty pleasures and gendered language is worth reading. If her blog isn’t one you’re regularly reading, you should fix that.
  • Liz Burns wonders what impact will be had if YALSA chooses to go ahead with making a couple of their selection committee virtual. That’s one of the topics they want to bring up at Annual this coming week. The other noteworthy items on her blog post about the Board Docs worth paying attention to are the changes to the YALSA award list access (they have collected 16,000 email addresses, friends — that’s huge). For me, one of the items that caught my eye in the Board Doc was looking into finding a source of revenue for the YALSA blog and YALSA’s The Hub through advertisement. Here are my thoughts on that: if the organization is going to profit from the blog posts that members write and post, I will no longer be posting there. I do not pay to be a member of the organization and then write in order for them to earn more money, wherein I receive no benefits for doing so. I mean, I can’t even access the award lists anymore without having to log in a few different times and come across a number of error messages before ultimately just Googling the lists.
  • I’m posting this one for selfish reasons and legitimate reasons. Random House made this video about how a book goes from the hands of an author into the hands of a reader, and more than one person kindly forwarded it to me and said check out the screenshot of STACKED at 5:25. I like what they have to say about how bloggers can make the difference in a book’s success. Did you read that? I emphasized it to help. I wish they’d left out the qualifiers of “oddly enough,” but I think that they bring it up at all is pretty substantial, especially in light of a lot of what came out of Book Blogger Con and what’s come out lately in the blogging world. Also, our blog looks really great on screen! 
  • I haven’t read a Haruki Murakami book since college, which was when I really fell in love with him, but after checking out this bingo card, I’m ready to visit some of the novels of his I haven’t read. 

I like to think there is a little of something for everyone here this week!

Life, Social Media, and Balance

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Well, I’m back. About two weeks ago, I officially “resigned” from Stacked and decided to hang up my hat as a book blogger. While I’ve absolutely loved contributing these past few years, I was starting to feel overwhelmed. My daughter just turned five months old, summer reading is starting at my library, my “to read” pile was growing ever bigger and more precarious, and I was desperately trying to find that elusive “balance” that we all seek. That sweet spot between family time, self time, work time, and down time. I figured that blogging didn’t fit into my life anymore, and honestly, I was starting to feel a bit burnt out overall. Rather than reading what I wanted to, I was attacked by that nagging sense of “I should read this book because it’s supposed to be the next hot thing” and “you shouldn’t read that adult fiction book you’ve been wanting to because there are so many YA ARCs sitting over there on your bookshelf.”

So I quit. Cold turkey. Emailed Kelly and Kim and let them know that blogging was cutting into that balance that I was striving to find. Those of you who follow me on Twitter (@jpetroroy) and Facebook may have also noticed that I posted updates stating that I was taking the entire month of June off from all social media, cutting the cords, going off the grid. I thought that that would restore a sense of serenity to my life, that without the obligation I felt to read, review, update Facebook with my latest goings-on, and tweet the latest humorous work anecdote, I would have more time for me. I could read what I wanted, write more, and spend more time with my family.

Ultimately, I lasted about a day and a half before I logged back on to Twitter and Facebook. And honestly, I don’t count this as a failure at all, because it made me realize some really important things about how social media, blogging, and the internet factor into both my daily life and into how society interacts in today’s modern age.

Because honestly, I came back because I missed people. Because of my busy life now, Twitter and Facebook have become a way to connect with my friends. Yes, I have friends from high school that I still talk to. Yes, I have “real life” friends that I hang out with on a regular basis. But honestly, social media has created some of the best friendships of my life. I “met” my best friends in the entire world, a group of librarians all in the Boston area, on Twitter. Some of us knew each other in real life before, but only slightly. But then through daily conversations on Twitter, we spent hours getting to know each other. Now we get together on a regular basis and we all witnessed two of them marry each other this past weekend. Four other librarians and I use the hashtag #babysupport group to trade advice about our babies, commiserate, and cheer each other on. I’ve never met Kelly and Kim in real life, yet I count them as close friends because of the almost daily emails we trade back and forth. And I use Facebook to chat with those “real life” friends who don’t live close to me anymore. After only a day, the idea of cutting off that contact entirely for a month just plain made me sad. Because I’m a social person who often doesn’t have time to be social. And social media closes that gap for me.

Blogging is the same way. I love the community of book bloggers that has risen up over the past few years, and I love being a part of it. I started blogging because I love reading, love engaging in conversations about what worked and what didn’t work in a text, love figuring out just why I get a certain book and why it gets me. And that hasn’t changed.

What changed was me. I tend to be a very black and white person, and this past month was no different. What I didn’t realize was that social media and blogging are not an all or nothing proposition. No one was forcing me to check Twitter before I went to bed, to see if anything amusing had happened to someone else besides me. No one was forcing me to read the latest YA release. If I wanted to read some chick lit or some nonfiction, I could. The obligation was emanating entirely from myself. I was burnt out on the pressure I was placing on me, not on blogging and reading.

And that meant that it could be taken away.

I know what I value now. I value time with my daughter and my husband. That takes priority above all. I value writing and I value reading what I want. But I also value the connections that social media gives to me, the pride I feel over a particularly well-crafted blog post or book review. And I especially value the friends that I made along the way. I can’t give that up for a month, and I don’t want to. Because I still need to make time for me, still need to value what I love and what gives me fulfillment.

What it all comes down to is balance. I realize now that the instant gratification of social media can become a bit of an addiction, especially when you’re checking it multiple times a day. So I cut down. That’s sensible, not black and white.

I can still be a mother, a wife, and a librarian without giving up the connections and the blogging that I love. It’s just time for moderation, to always check in with myself about what I value.

So, anyway, I’m back!

Have you ever had trouble balancing social media with real life?

Starters by Lissa Price

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Callie Woodland* and her brother, Tyler, are orphans – their parents were killed in the Spore Wars and they’ve been surviving on their own ever since. The Spore Wars actually killed off everyone between the ages of 20 and 60, and as a result, those over 60 have disenfranchised those under 20 of much of their rights: they can’t hold a job or vote, for instance. 
With no legal means of making money and no adult to claim them, Callie is desperate, especially since her brother is ill and in need of care. So she decides to sign on with Prime Destinations, a company that allows “Enders” (those over 60) to take over the bodies of “Starters” (those under 20) for a brief period of time. It allows the Enders to experience what it’s like to be youthful again and nets the Starters a significant amount of money.
Unfortunately for Callie, the procedure goes awry. She wakes up before the Ender who rented her body has relinquished it, but if she goes back to Prime Destinations and tells them, she won’t get paid. Callie isn’t even in complete control of her body at this point – she’ll black out again and then wake up in another place, knowing the Ender had re-taken control for that period of time. What’s more, she fears that the Ender has something dangerous in mind for her body, and Callie is determined to prevent it from happening.
Starters is such a fun read. It’s one of those books that you set down after reading the last page and say to yourself “Whew!” It’s a finish-in-one-sitting, don’t-want-to-put-it-down read, with bountiful secrets and breathless revelations. Basically what I’m saying is that Starters is a page-turner of the highest order.
Unlike some fast-paced, plot-driven books, Starters doesn’t feel thin or hastily put together. There’s some character development, one or two subplots, and at least some semblance of world-building (although that is probably its weakest part – more on this later). It’s unpredictable, twisty, and superbly written in that way that makes you completely fall into the story without surfacing until you realize you should probably eat sometime that day.
I always used to consider myself a stickler for world-building that makes sense in all aspects, but more and more I’m realizing that it’s not as important to me as long as the writer sells it with conviction. Delirium has, arguably, one of the most ridiculous premises I’ve ever encountered, but I quite enjoyed it despite that. Starters is a little more believable, but there were still a couple points that irritated me: 
1. The Spore Wars killed off everyone between the ages of 20 and 60 because they weren’t given the vaccine, but it’s impossible to believe that no one in this age range had access to it, legally or otherwise. The Spore Wars and the illness they caused are sketchy at best, so don’t go into this expecting any explanation.
2. Everyone over 60 is called an “Ender,” even though people at this point in time routinely live to 200 years of age or more. When not even half your life is finished, I don’t think you can really be called an “ender.”
Plot has always been my main reading love, and Starters has one of the best. It’s backed up by solid writing and an expert sense of timing. Starters is ideal for all readers who enjoy fast-paced, plot-driven, mind-bending reads, and especially for fans of Divergent.
(Do you like the cover? I don’t have anything against the shininess, but the image of Callie is really off-putting to me.)
*If I were this book’s editor, I would have asked Price to change her name to something a little less similar to “Caddie Woodlawn,” which I must have said in my mind a dozen times.
Review copy received from the publisher. Starters is available now.